I installed 2 packages yesterday, it was around 50 F and sunny but got cold overnight. I was out during the night and looked up through the bottom of one of my hives with a flashlight(it has a translucent BB under the screen). The cluster was hanging from the top bars, but was seperated from the hanging queen cage by 2 bar thicnesses. The bees in the packages were Italians, the queens Russians. This morning I slid the BB out a bit from the other hive and peeked up into it as well, same thing, but its cluster was about 2x the size of the other. Lots of drift in one day I guess as the packages felt to be about the same weight when I emptied them. Has anyone observed this before? Probably impossible to know if it happens in a lang' but with a TBH one can see more of what is going on in the beginning. It is going to be cold and windy today, I am considering opening one of the hives up and releasing the queen and see if they accept her, I don't know why they wouldnt, When I picked the packages up the supplier said they had been in them for 3 days already.

04-04-2004, 12:48 PM

topbarguy

I'd move the queens over inside the cluster and leave them for awhile. Check and see if any bees are biting the cage wire before releasing them.

Regards
Dennis

04-04-2004, 08:46 PM

dcross

Hi-ho the dairy-o, the cluster and the queen!

Sorry, I'm off to bed now. Must be giddy from the first sting of the year.

04-06-2004, 06:24 AM

limulus

Thanks,
I brought the queen in and warmed her up, she looked dead and I thought she was as it was 20 F all night and she was all alone. She warmed up and was ok. So I put her back out,moved her over to the cluster and everything seems ok. My neck does hurt from laying on the ground looking up through the screen too much. But other than that all is working out.